Too Many Black Dresses
by AnnaOtaku
Summary: Bella owned too many black dresses. Stained with tears and freshly turned soil, they mocked her, whispering to her at night when her imagination was greatest and her mental barriers weak. 'You’re next, Bella.' AU.AH.ONESHOT.


**So, I wrote this with OC's and posted it on fictionpress, but since no one will actualy read it there, I decided to turn it into a fanfic and actually get some feedback. NOw, I've been less than nice about Twilight lately, but the story fit the characters better than anything else, so I went for it. Please enjoy. And review ^_^**

Bella owned too many black dresses.

They crowded her closet, strangling the life out of her blue sweaters and green shirts. Stained with tears and freshly turned soil, they hung silently, catching her eye, prodding at her memory every time she forgot to close the door. They mocked her, whispering to her at night when her imagination was greatest and her mental barriers weak.

_You're next, Bella._

Emmett had been first. Not a week after they had formed their little "club" he was found dead at the bottom of the staircase to the church's bell-tower, neck broken. Though Bella had barely known him, she had cried hardest at his funeral. He had been a simple, kind person, with childish dimples and a constant smile on his face. He had been the poster-boy for his church, and an honor student at school. No one suspected any foul-play in his death. Accidents happen. That's life. Even Bella hadn't thought anything of it. None of the club members had.

That is, until Rosalie was found in a ravine two months later, bludgeoned to death.

Bella remembered the crime scene photos with horrific clarity: The stunning body of her friend crumpled on the cold ground, dark blood pooled under her head, staining her bleached hair red. The memory still brought bile rising to her throat, tears to her eyes.

Police suspected a mugging at first, until they found her wallet and cell phone, tucked away neatly in her sequined purse. This raised suspicion. The police interviewed all of Rosalie's friends, including the club members, for any clues as to who might want their friend dead. An angry drug dealer? A violent ex-boyfriend?

It was an unspoken agreement among the club members not to tell the police about their frequent use of a Ouija board, and the ominous messages they usually received. It was just a silly game. It couldn't _possibly_ be the reason for her death. The men in blue would have just laughed at them.

Like the black dresses in Bella's closet now laughed at her like crazed shadows, filling her tired, itching eyes with images of blood and gravestones.

The club met again a few days after Rosalie's funeral, faces grave. For an hour they debated contacting the spirits again. Bella, among a few others, were against it, afraid that it was what their friends. Tanya scoffed at them, convinced they weren't _actually_ communicating with "spirits" and that, by doing it again, she could prove they were just a bunch of scaredy-cats.

She was the next to die.

The doctors said it was it was an anomaly. How could a healthy, athletic girl with no family history of heart disease be suddenly overcome by a heart attack? No one seemed to know.

Bella knew. The club members knew.

The black dresses in Bella's closet knew. Number three was added for Tanya's funeral. Bella's mother was convinced it would be tacky to wear the same one to two different funerals. Bella disagreed. Two laughing voices in her closet were enough. She didn't need three.

The club tried to contact the spirits again, to find out why they were killing off innocent kids. The only response they got was vague, but chilling.

_Satan likes to play._

Alice started crying, and Edward turned pale. Bella couldn't stop shaking as she read and re-read the words she had written down on the notepad. Jasper said nothing, but got up and left before anyone finished composing themselves.

His body was never found. Police found his car on the side of a bridge, a note in the glove compartment.

_If I'm doomed to Hell, it will be by my own hands._

At the time Bella hadn't understood what he meant. All she knew was that there were only three of them now.

She hardly ate. She hardly slept. She even stopped going to school, choosing instead to go to the library with Alice and Edward, searching desperately on the public computers for a solution to their "spirit" problem. No one seemed to have the answer, only similar stories of hauntings and curses.

A few months passed, and they were starting to wonder if Jasper had been the last to die. Bella started to smile again, and Alice gained back some of the weight she had lost, giving life to both of their faces for the first time in ages.

Edward's death was the most gruesome. He was the lone one of the trio to brave the real world, sure that the "curse" was gone. He took his little sisters to the fair so they could ride The Demon, an ironically named rollercoaster that the boy had loved throughout his childhood. While on the highest loop in the state, his restraints came undone, sending him to his death almost two hundred feet below. He splattered across the tracks like a bug on a windshield, the last sound in his ears the screaming of his sisters.

Bella had to hold up a shivering Alice throughout Edward's funeral. The two girls had never been friends, but here they were, clinging to each other like sisters, refusing to let the other go.

Alice even slept at Bella's house after the service, and they held each other through the night, whimpering as the dresses laughed at them. As her new friend fell asleep, Bella stopped blocking the whispering voices. The seemed to chant along with the deep breathing of the girl next to her.

_Alice is next…Alice is next…Alice is next…_

And, indeed, she was. The next morning, as Bella bid goodbye to the doomed girl, she knew she would never see her again. As Alice drove home in the rain, her car broke down on the railroad tracks, the doors refusing to unlock. Bella wondered if she even heard the frantic whistle of the train, or the thundering of the wheels that would crush her to death.

_And then there was one_… She thought at the funeral, her eyes dry and anxiety worn thin. Bella had always possessed a grim sense of humor, but now there was no one to share it with.

She was next. She knew it, the dresses knew it. She was going to die.

In a final act of desperation, Bella tried to destroy the Ouija board. She burned it in the fireplace when her parents were out, but it held on, only singing on the edges. She stabbed it, over and over, trying to tear it to pieces, but it would never break the whole way. She ran it over with her older brother's pickup truck, but it only flattened it a tad. She threw it off the bridge that had taken Jasper's life, but it reappeared in her closet as soon as she got home, soaking wet.

As she studied it, hoping to find a trace of weakness, Bella noticed a faint scratch on the surface of the board she had not noticed before. Tracing it with her finger, she noticed it formed a sentence, written in a messy cursive.

_Your soul belongs to me._

She screamed, shoving the board back into her closet, slamming the door. The dresses began to laugh and she yelled at them, voice hoarse and cracking, "SHUT UP!"

Terrified, the girl ran from the house, heart pounding wildly. She decided to go to the library, to desperately search for an answer, some way to save her soul.

As she started to cross the street near the graveyard where her friends slept, Bella felt a cold chill spread across her skin, settling deep into her bones. Her head felt light and dizzy, like she was about to faint, and she knew -- _knew -- _that it was time. She froze, watching as the bus came out of nowhere, speeding like a demon. Time seemed to slow around her as it approached, letting her turn her head once more to the graveyard, where a man now sat on Emmett's grave.

He was tall and pale, in a white suit and white fedora, a black cane gripped in his long fingers. As he looked up, red eyes glinting merrily at the girl, she knew her fate. He winked at her, and then the bus sped up, honking wildly. Bella stood and faced it, a lone tear on her cheek and a single thought in her head.

_You can't fight the devil._

The bus smashed into her braced form, killing the last of the death club members. Police would report it as a brake failure, and no one would know any better, except for the man in white. As the wailing crowd gathered around her broken body, calling out for the paramedics, he smiled, tugging on the brim of his hat as he got up from the gravestone. His red eyes flashed from the shadows of his fedora, and he was gone.

Back at Bella's house, her unaware mother was cleaning out the girl's closet when she stumbled upon a worn-out Ouija board. It had been burned and smashed and stabbed and abused in as many ways as a teenage girl could think of. Her mother stared at it curiously, then set it back in the closet, shutting the door. As she walked away, she could have sworn she heard laughter coming from the closet.


End file.
